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Have you been wanting to grow long hair, but feeling short on the patience it requires? I’ve sure been there – I want long hair like nobody’s business, but waiting for my hair to grow feels like waiting in an endless line at Disneyland.

It’s like this: you want the gorgeous long locks that you see on other girls, but it seems almost impossible to get. Will it ever happen? Below, we’ve included a few important things to know as well as some helpful tips to help you learn how to grow long, healthy hair more quickly.

First of all, you need to understand that when it comes to growing long hair, every person has an actual genetically determined lifespan for their hair. This means that your body lets each strand of hair grow for a certain number of years. At the end of the lifespan, an individual strand will then simply fall out by shedding naturally or simply falling out during a shampoo or while the hair is being brushed.

In addition to the lifespan of a person’s hair, each person’s hair grows at a different rate. So, both things will influence your individual potential for getting long hair (along with a few additional factors we’ll discuss below). For instance, girls who have an easy time maintaining waist-length locks genetically have a longer lifespan for their hair, and may also naturally have hair that grows faster than girls who struggle to get it past their shoulders.

Finally, maintaining healthy hair (which depends on the care and overall treatment you give your hair) has a huge impact on your ability to grow long hair.

Just like our bodies, we start off with what we have been given genetically. After that, it’s up to how we treat our bodies that determines how we will look overall. If you want to know how to get long hair, understand that each of us may have an easier or harder time getting our hair to grow long due to genetics, but there are definitely things we can do to make the most of what we’ve got:

How to Make Your Hair Grow Longer:

1. Be gentle with your hair. Treat it as if it were delicate tissue paper. This will result in far less breakage than if you pull, twist and mess with it. Some of you are going to hate me, but this includes not twirling your hair! I, for one, have a horrible habit of twirling my hair non-stop. I’ve tried to quit. Guess I’ve just got to try harder. Playing with your hair is one of the worst things you can do.. your hair breaks off at an alarming rate when you regularly twirl it.

2. Don’t tease your hair. When you tease your hair, you actually comb against the cuticle, roughing it up which makes the hair appear dull. When the cuticle is sealed and remains flat and straight, it reflects light and appears shinier. In addition to diminished shine, teasing your hair also weakens the strand and makes it extra vulnerable to breakage.

3. When brushing or combing your hair, start from the ends first. This minimizes tangles. Be gentle as you begin brushing and any tangles you do come across will come out much easier. If your hair is wet, be extra gentle since your hair can stretch and break when it’s wet. The best thing to use on wet hair is a wide tooth comb instead of a brush.

4. Use a deep conditioner. This is a hair care essential. For most people with normal to dry hair, we recommend deep conditioning once a week or so. But if you have very dry or color-treated hair, and you’re trying to grow it out, you will probably want to use a deep conditioner every time you wash your hair, or at least every few days.

5. Don’t use heat when styling your hair. Yes, this one may be practically impossible for most of you, but experts agree that heat styling (drying, curling or straightening) causes your hair to be much more dry and brittle. If you absolutely must use heated styling tools, use a high quality heat protectant product before styling.

6. De-Stress! Stress inhibits hair growth, causing it to thin. The hair that does grow is typically delicate and brittle, resulting in easy breakage.

7. Eat healthy. This is probably one of the most important things you can do. Good nutrition is the foundation for growing healthy hair. Protein, essential fatty acids (like omega 3) and other nutrients will help tremendously in giving you strong, healthy, shiny hair. Taking a high quality multi-vitamin can really help as well. The stronger and healthier your hair, the more easily and quickly it will grow.

8. Trim your ends regularly. Many people claim that trimming your ends makes your hair grow faster. It doesn’t actually make it grow more quickly because it grows from the root, not the tip. However, regular trims keep the ends even and healthy. When they are irregular, dry and straggly, they break much more easily. Keeping them nicely trimmed will actually help you get the length you want more quickly simply because it will eliminate much of the breakage you would otherwise have. Plus, since growing hair long does take time, your hair will look much better along the way.